MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Nvidia on Wednesday denied plans to invest $1 billion in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, hours after the state governor touted the firm's plans to build a data center there.
Later on Wednesday, Governor Samuel Garcia appeared to correct the information, with local media reporting he had clarified that the planned green hydrogen data center investment would actually come from Mexico's CIPRE Holding and would use Nvidia technology.
"Nvidia does not have financial investment plans in Nuevo Leon," the U.S. chip major said in a statement to Reuters. "The company's support for digital transformation and technological progress in Latin America is based exclusively on cooperation initiatives, research and talent development."
Earlier in the day, Garcia said in a message shared on social media that Nvidia was planning to spend $1 billion to build a so-called green data center focusing on artificial intelligence in the state.
Garcia made the announcement in a video message uploaded to social media, flanked by representatives from Nvidia.
It was not immediately clear who the Nvidia representatives were or why they did not dispute the governor's claim at the time.
Nvidia did not immediately answer a request for clarification from Reuters on those topics or what the future of the purported data center was.
The Nuevo Leon state government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Kylie Madry; Additional reporting by Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez, Brendan O'Boyle and Christopher Cushing)
